Steam announces an automatic update is now available for Dungeon Defenders to bring the dungeon crawler to version 7.40 along with the announcement that the new Jester Hero DLC is now available for the game, and will be free-of-charge for the next two weeks. Here's word:

A sly trickster born in a whimsical realm of chaos, the Jester's abilities are shrouded in mystery. She can quickly turn the tide of battle by using any weapon and can deceive enemies with 'presents' that explode to reveal random defenses and bonuses. Her 'Move Tower' ability allows her to adapt defensive strategies and react to any combat situation, while her 'Wheel O' Fortuna' ability can grant boons or decimate friend and foe alike.

The huge patches were a result of how steam can only(at the time), update content at the file level, and even minor updates to an unreal engine game results in large files changing, since most things are packaged together. A while back the game required converting to a 'new' steam format, which was so that binary diff sort of patches could be distributed rather than downloading entire files fresh.

I agree the game is fun, but it got old when my gear could only support my doing 2 levels of nightmare difficulty(ramparts and spires), and even that was snatched away when they patched in the stupidass sharken characters that push your shit out of the way. Now I'm relegated to not being able to do nightmare myself, so the game is effectively identical to Diablo 3 and the auction house, where you have to farm money and buy high level items from other players, and that's not fun at all. I can still get some enjoyment from helping other players tackle the nightmare challenges and giving away reward weapons and stuff, but it's annoying that the end game has such a huge progression stomping wall.

El Pit wrote on Aug 9, 2012, 04:04:I really like the game, but uninstalled it when they started to release 300 MB huge patches on a bi-daily basis. They sort of took the steam out of Steam for me when they started this. I didn't get the impression that the game was severly broken, so why all these huge patches so very often? That's not support, that's annoying.

It wasn't the patches that ended up with me stopping playing, it was the reason behind them. The studio was treating the game like it was in alpha, doing frequent patches with no testing, and then having to release another patch that fixed what the previous one broke. They frequently released patches that made huge swings in how the game play operated, often without prior announcement or discussion, despite promises after the first few times they wouldn't do so. In the same day sometimes as an example, they released a patch that boosted drop rates in one level, then had extreme nerf to the drop rates way below original, then reboosted them slightly, all the while admitting since they weren't skilled enough to survive as long as players could in that level, they never bothered to test it past where they could survive (what, had they never heard of things like a dev only god mode?). They did huge nerfs to items and then admitted they only tested items on the inn dummy, and didn't bother to test them in actual levels where things like penetration through multiple monsters and spread/grouping of a multishot weapon makes a HUGE difference in how powerful a weapon is, regardless of what DPS it hits for on the dummy).

So I figured I'd stop playing for a while, let them stabilize. Let them realize that they aren't in an alpha with just testers, but that they are in release. I haven't yet gone back.

But man, the game itself was TONS of fun! I enjoyed and played it far more than OMD.

I really like the game, but uninstalled it when they started to release 300 MB huge patches on a bi-daily basis. They sort of took the steam out of Steam for me when they started this. I didn't get the impression that the game was severly broken, so why all these huge patches so very often? That's not support, that's annoying.

Kythlyn wrote on Aug 8, 2012, 21:33:Great support for a great product.

Lol, yes and no. That they're offering the Jester for free temporarily (as they did some previous holiday-themed DLC) probably means the class is a piece of shit. Both the Series EV and Summoner classes made HUGE impacts on game-wide balance when they were added as DLC; they're so good/overpowered that you basically have to buy them to use yourself or play with somebody else who has one or both in order to not be severely handicapped in the highest difficulties. They sure as hell weren't handing those out for nothin'.

EDIT: Yep, I just read up on it... The Jester is little more than a novelty class, a fun little joke whose abilities are based primarily on random chance. He simply sews chaos and is incredibly hard to solo because you cannot reliably build defenses. For example, the "towers" you place are presents that, when opened up, will spawn either a random tower from another class, a [crappy] loot drop, some mana gems, or an enemy monster (mostly ogres from what I'm seeing, wow). People say his stats make him a pretty decent hero character, since he can dual-wield any weapons, but that's about it. Seems to me your only chance of getting allowed into a Nightmare-Hardcore match is with a friend or a generous stranger that will allow you to mooch off his build.